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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27777751">someone to eat the fruit</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/'>Anonymous</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Supernatural</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Ambiguous/Open Ending, Blasphemy, Canon-Typical Violence, Knock-Knock Jokes, Lucifer's Cage (Supernatural), M/M, Very Temporary Character Death, clock the knock-knock jokes, clock the t-rating, light cannibalism, suicide (see previous tag), these tags make it sound way darker than it really is</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-11 00:09:21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,447</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27777751</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The Cage is not what Sam expects.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Lucifer/Sam Winchester</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>99</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Anonymous</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>someone to eat the fruit</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>They roll onto the sand, clawing at each other's arms and necks and faces, blinded to all else by a tremendous, driving rage. Over the thumping of his heart in his ears, the roar of blood as it rushes to his head, Sam can't hear the gentle lapping of water on the shore. He hears his own cries. He hears Lucifer growling and snapping with hungry, wordless hate. There is almost nothing else in existence. </p><p>So Sam spends his first moments in the Cage only distantly aware of the sand beneath and sun above, and accepts without question that Hell is a desert, barren and dry. It's only later - minutes or hours or days; there is no real measure for it down here - that he realizes his mistake.</p><p>He lies bleeding on his back, in agony, exhausted. He weakly turns his head to stare in the direction that Lucifer has tossed his heart, torn free from the broken cavity of Sam's chest. It sits innocently at the water's edge, glistening wet with blood and water. Every few seconds, a soft wave comes in, envelops it in a thick and heavy foam, and then retreats. Beyond that - an ocean, and no end to it in sight.</p><p>A dark shadow blocks out the sun. Sam squints up at it and sees nothing in the backlit shape except a pair of glowing blue eyes. Then it twists and Sam sees his Adversary - his now, his and his alone - blood dripping from his broken nose, lip split and twisted in a snarl.</p><p>"Disgusting," Lucifer wheezes around his wounds. "Pathetic. Loathsome. Vile." Each word is a vicious punch of air.</p><p>Sam looks up at him and laughs. It catches in his throat and chokes him. Blood spills out of his mouth. But the mirth must be plain on his face through the pain, because Lucifer howls with anger, and the hairs on the back of Sam's neck stand on end, but he turns his head and there is his heart and the ocean still going in and out all the same.</p><p>"Do you know what you've done?" Lucifer demands. </p><p>Sam hears a spike of grief. </p><p>He hoists himself up onto his elbows, makes to crawl toward his heart before the ocean takes it, washes it away. A foot comes down hard on his side, forcing him back into the sand. He spits more blood. Where does it all come from, he wonders. There's so much of it, but his heart is all the way over there, brining and withering in the sun.</p><p>"How could you?" Lucifer demands. "How could you do this to me, Sam?"</p><p>Sam looks up at him again. The Devil is weeping. And where does it all come from, Sam wonders more strangely. How can he cry? After all, he's the Devil, and the ocean is all the way over there, calmly teasing at Sam's heart.</p><p>Lucifer collapses to his knees, bends over Sam until the sea and the sun have disappeared once more. This close, Sam can see the wild sorrow in his eyes. He can see the shaking in Lucifer's shoulders as he reaches out and wraps his fingers around Sam's neck and squeezes.</p><p>Sam laughs and chokes and bleeds, and then all goes dark.</p><p>But only for an instant. </p><p>He blinks his eyes and returns to his body and the only proof that he was gone is that the blood has stopped spilling and his chest is whole and Lucifer has waded out into the water, up to his waist. His back is turned to Sam. He stares silently toward the horizon. He is still. The horizon trembles with a faint mirage.</p><p>Sam sits up and feels his breast beneath his shirt. For a hideous moment he wonders if he'll find it empty, if his heart really has been taken by the tide, and now it's gone forever, sunken somewhere out in the depths. But then he finds the familiar beat. It pulses under his fingertips.</p><p>"Did you put my heart back inside of me?" he asks.</p><p>Lucifer turns to look at him. For the first time since they arrived in the Cage, his lips curl into a smile. His mouth is smeared with blood.</p><p>"I took a bite of it first," he says.</p><p>Then he turns away, and Sam is left sitting blearily on a strange and infinite shore.</p><p>.</p><p>And the shore is infinite. It loops back in on itself.</p><p>Sam tries walking along it, once he's recovered enough to stand. At first he walks to get away, and then, when Lucifer has shrunk to a small dot far behind him, he walks to see how far he can go. He searches for change - something other than dry grass and rocks and driftwood logs and sand, always more sand. Out on the water, he looks for boats. Nothing appears. In and out, the waves follow his steps, the sound like a metronome thudding ceaselessly in his ears.</p><p>Sam isn't sure how long he walks for. He doesn't get tired or feel hunger or thirst. Eventually, the sun sets and the moon rises. The stars are bright and beautiful, clearer here than they are on the clearest nights on earth, but they're all strange. He can't find the familiar constellations - the Big Dipper, Orion's Belt. There is no Milky Way. These are different stars, or false ones. Sam feels lost, dizzy with disorientation.</p><p>He stares at the sky for so long that he doesn't notice Lucifer ahead of him until Sam is nearly upon him again. The fallen angel is still standing in the water. The moonlight spills across the shifting surface all around him, pale and shining. The crawling curve of a swell carries the light stretching out behind him toward the beach, and for a moment it looks as if Lucifer's reflection has wings. Then the wave meets the sand and the illusion breaks on the shore.</p><p>"...Is this an island?" Sam asks, although he wasn't aware of any curve as he walked.</p><p>Lucifer does not respond.</p><p>Sam huffs and keeps walking until Lucifer has disappeared once more.</p><p>When he comes back around again, Lucifer is waiting, a storm in his eyes, and he lunges at Sam with hands and feet and teeth.</p><p>Sam is almost grateful for it. There's nothing else here except their hate for each other and the tide. He bends into the wrathful embrace and as his bones snap and he snaps Lucifer's bones in return, the pain is a whisper of change.</p><p>There is no breeze here. There are no birds or bugs or fish. There is only the sun and the sea and the sand and Satan, biting off a chunk of Sam's ear and spitting it into the dirt. Sam scrambles to give as good as he gets, and their blood mixes in an endless river between them.</p><p>Finally, Lucifer pulls away. Whatever desperate impulse compelled him to attack has disappeared. Sam chases after him, still burning with that insatiable desire to feel and cause pain, but Lucifer only laughs and bats him off as easily as if he were rebuffing a child.</p><p>"Don't worry," Lucifer says with a wry smile. "Soon even this will become boring."</p><p>He wades back out into the water and lets it take the already drying blood away.</p><p>.</p><p>Sam walks another loop.</p><p>He's not sure how much time passes with each sunup and sundown. It really is completely useless to try measuring anything in the Cage. It resists definition. Every second is, within itself, infinite. The more Sam tries to break it down and count it out, the longer it gets. He may as well count the grains of sand on the beach. </p><p>The sun rises and falls merely because that's what it's expected to do. The tide goes in and out because to do otherwise would be to stop completely. Sam walks along the shore because this is how he's always lived his life - going forward, without real hope, but moved by a need and a fear.</p><p>Whatever Lucifer is doing, it is happening deep within himself, and maybe somewhere far beyond the horizon, outside of eternity, and further still.</p><p>.</p><p>"Where are Michael and Adam?" Sam asks, lying once again in a tacky pool of his own blood.</p><p>His arms and legs are scattered down the beach. If he looks left or right he can see his fingers clenching uselessly at the sand.</p><p>"Elsewhere," Lucifer says.</p><p>"Elsewhere exists?" Sam asks.</p><p>"Do you imagine," Lucifer says bitterly, "that I am obliged to answer you? To indulge your stupidity? Your obnoxious, grating human ignorance?"</p><p>"What else is there for you to do?" Sam asks.</p><p>"Take you apart," Lucifer says. He stoops to pick up one of Sam's legs. "Put you back together again. Wash myself clean of your filth."</p><p>"Soon even that will become boring," Sam parrots.</p><p>"Yes," Lucifer says dryly. "That's why I'm making it last."</p><p>"And then what?"</p><p>"And then maybe I'll try being gentle, Sam," Lucifer says, but it is mocking and false. "I'll be loving and tender and sweet. At least until we're both bored of that, as well."</p><p>"And then what?"</p><p>Lucifer drops Sam's limbs by his head and wades silently out into the sea.</p><p>"And then what?" Sam asks again.</p><p>The sun beats down on his face without burning his skin. Blood and sand fill his mouth. Always - the sound of waves.</p><p>"And then what?" he asks, loud enough that his voice carries above it. But he receives no reply.</p><p>.</p><p>They fight. They bleed. Sam walks. Lucifer wades. The sun goes up and down and the tide goes in and out and Sam thinks, this hasn't been a year or even a month or a week or a day. An hour has passed. Just like this, in no time at all.</p><p>.</p><p>As predicted, Lucifer gets bored of ripping Sam apart, which is fine, because Sam was getting bored himself. They start to pass the time in true silence, ignoring one another's presence.</p><p>Then Sam develops a new way to walk. He gets up off the sand where Lucifer last flung his broken body decades ago and ambles out into the surf. He wades past Lucifer, and then further. The water reaches his chest. The waves grow higher and deeper and they take turns swallowing him up to his ears and then spitting him back out.</p><p>Salt water fills his mouth. He keeps walking until the whole of him is filled, until he's taken completely by the cold, empty sea. Underneath the surface, there is nothing but blackness and the sandy bottom, sloping gradually away. It is silent, but the silence presses in on Sam's brain, drags him close, shoves itself into every orifice and drives out everything that isn't the rumbling of water all round.</p><p>His lungs start to burn.</p><p>Drowning isn't pleasant. It's a thrashing panic, an instinctual urge to fight, to kick and swim and crawl toward the surface in search of air. To breathe. Sam relishes every furious pounding beat of his heart in his throat, thrilled by the wrongness in his cold skin.</p><p>When he wakes, wet and limp on the shore again, Lucifer is looming over him, a curious look in his eyes.</p><p>"When you went under," he says, "I thought for a moment that you were gone for good."</p><p>"Would you have missed me?" Sam asks.</p><p>Lucifer considers this for a long time.</p><p>"Yes," he finally decides. "But it would have been worth it for that one instant when I didn't know what would happen next."</p><p>Sam laughs and hacks up water and thinks how funny and ironic it all is, down here in the Cage, but also up on earth, and in Heaven, too. He has an inkling, now. He wonders if it's occurred to Lucifer yet. Maybe it can only occur to Sam, who is human, and filled with doubt.</p><p>.</p><p>Drowning becomes Sam's new hobby. It occupies him for long after the instinct to fight for his life dies out.</p><p>Eventually he passes Lucifer enough times in the water that the archangel asks, "What are you hoping to gain from this exactly?"</p><p>And Sam says, "There's a split second right after I die, before I come back, when there's absolutely nothing at all. It's total oblivion."</p><p>Lucifer makes no further comment. Sam passes him again and throws himself into the ocean to drown.</p><p>But eventually even oblivion starts to get boring.</p><p>.</p><p>It must be a hundred years before they have an actual conversation. Give or take.</p><p>Sam sits on the shore. Lucifer stands in the sea.</p><p>Sam says to his back, "Do you know what a Chinese finger trap is?"</p><p>"Yes," Lucifer says.</p><p>"The more you try to escape it, the tighter it gets," Sam says anyway, because talking takes time and is something different from silence. "It's only when you ease into it, accept it, that you can work yourself free. Maybe this is like that."</p><p>"It's not," Lucifer says flatly. "There's nothing to accept. There's nothing."</p><p>Sam closes his eyes anyway. He listens to the waves. He sinks into the sound and feels the sunlight warm and soft on his skin. He evens out his breathing, counts his breaths, and tries to think of nothing at all. When he opens his eyes again, there is no difference in the world. Much or no time has passed. There is no difference.</p><p>Lucifer is right, he thinks. This is not like that.</p><p>"Talk to me," Sam says, and hates how weak he sounds. "Please."</p><p>"What is there to say?" Lucifer asks, sounding just as tired. "I've said it all before. You never listened."</p><p>That's not true, Sam thinks, but it's possible Lucifer is speaking more abstractly now, and Sam doesn't have it in him to argue.</p><p>"Anything," Sam says instead. "I'll listen this time."</p><p>Lucifer turns in the water, until he's facing Sam completely. The waves break against his back, sending up spray like sparks. He is the breaker in the flood. He is the flaw in the otherwise uninterrupted flow. The fly in the ointment.</p><p>"I'll tell you a funny story," Lucifer says.</p><p>"Can't wait to hear what you qualify as a joke," Sam says, only somewhat ironically.</p><p>Lucifer smiles.</p><p>"Once upon a time," he begins, "an angel walked the earth. He found himself on the shore of Lake Avernus, in the southern part of what you now call Italy. Lovely country. You should try and visit someday, if you get the chance."</p><p>Sam rolls his eyes.</p><p>"There," Lucifer continues, "the angel walked alone, examining God's creations. After he had been walking for a while, he came upon a solitary farm, far from the villages where other humans lived. It had one poor, sagging house and, beside that, a magnificent orchard. Each tree was of a different size. The greatest and oldest of them was closest to the house, and the further away the trees stood from the domicile, the smaller and younger they became. There, at the far edge, the angel spied a man tending to the smallest tree of all, still a sapling.</p><p>"Curious, the angel approached. He greeted the farmer as a traveler and found himself eagerly welcomed. Before then, the angel had little cause to walk among humans, and was pleasantly surprised by the courtesy he received. The farmer treated a stranger without money or title as an honored guest. They sat at the farmer's table together and shared a simple meal.</p><p>"'You have a lovely orchard,' the angel said. 'I see there are many kinds of fruit trees, and all of them are healthy and well tended. You must be very proud, and very well fed.'</p><p>"'Yes, I am,' the farmer said. 'My family has kept this orchard for hundreds of years. It is my greatest joy.' Despite these words, he became suddenly morose.</p><p>"'What troubles you?' the angel asked. And so the farmer thus explained: Whenever a member of his family was close to death - of illness or old age or something else - they would use their last days and strength to go out into the orchard and plant a new tree. They did this knowing that the tree would never bear fruit in their lifetime. It was a gift - to plant fruit that only someone else could eat.</p><p>"The angel was touched by this sentiment. He deemed the action good, and said as much to the farmer, who was pleased. But still, he continued to be troubled. The angel pressed him further.</p><p>"'My family's orchard is nearly at its end,' the farmer admitted. 'Earlier this year, my wife passed away, and she left me with no children of my own. When I die, I will have no one to plant a tree for. There will be no one to eat the fruit, not mine, and not my ancestors. It is a terrible waste.'</p><p>"The angel agreed, but there was nothing he could think of to do. He left the farmer to his lonely orchard and continued walking on, inexplicably bothered by this one little human's loss.</p><p>"Eventually, the angel came upon a village. It was his habit to avoid such places, but this time he entered, because he'd had an idea. The angel told the people who lived there about the honest and hardworking farmer in his far off house with the splendid orchard. The angel thought, if the other humans know what earthly treasures await them, they will go to the farmer and partake of his harvest, and all will be as it should. He will have a new wife soon. He will have many sons. So the angel told his tale, and then, satisfied, he left the village and walked on.</p><p>"Time passed. The angel wandered here and there. He saw many things, great and small, and wondered at them all. Then he got it into his head to visit the farmer again. He wanted to see if what he had planned had come to pass. So he returned to the little solitary farm with its splendid orchard. Once he was there, what do you think the angel saw?"</p><p>Lucifer paused for Sam to respond. Sam remained silent. Lucifer shrugged.</p><p>"The farmer was nowhere in sight. The farm was largely in disrepair. A group of bandits had taken up residence in the poor, sagging house, and they stood now in the orchard, eating its fruit as they laughed and spoke. Invisible, the angel listened in, and heard the bandits bragging to each other about their luck. They had heard of this plentiful farm and come to take it for their own. They had killed the farmer who lived there and sold what was left of his meager possessions. Now they had a place to hide and plan their crimes, with plenty of delicious fruit to eat.</p><p>"When he heard that, the angel could have killed the bandits," Lucifer concludes. "He could have avenged the human farmer who had been so worthy and kind. Yet the angel did nothing, only stood there and watched as they pulled the apples from the trees and split them open with their teeth, the juice dribbling down their greedy chins. He merely stood back and watched their desecration. Why do you think that is?"</p><p>"The Mercy of Heaven?" Sam guesses without much enthusiasm.</p><p>"No, not at all," Lucifer says. "He wanted very badly to kill them. He was filled with terrible wrath. Still, he did nothing. Why?"</p><p>Sam shrugs with one shoulder.</p><p>"I don't know," he says. "Why?"</p><p>"That's the funny part," Lucifer says with a black-hearted smile. "The angel thought, this is what the farmer wanted, after all: Someone to eat the fruit."</p><p>Sam thinks about this.</p><p>"I always forget," he says, "what an awful sense of humor angels have."</p><p>Sam resolves to teach Lucifer some knock-knock jokes instead.</p><p>.</p><p>They talk after that, more or less.</p><p>Sam rambles, about everything and nothing. He tells stories about Dean, about their dad, about Bobby, about Jess. He talks about hunts they went on and the places they went in between. He recounts the plots to several different books and movies as if they were funny things that had happened to a friend, until Lucifer finally recognizes <em> The Count of Monte Cristo </em>, and calls him out on it. Sam is satisfied to take this as proof that Lucifer has at least been listening.</p><p>Lucifer talks little at first, uninterested or maybe unwilling to say anything of value to a human. The Cage destroys all reluctance eventually, though. Lucifer speaks of stars dying in universes too far off to see. He describes the sounds that ancient aquatic dinosaurs made when they sang to each other in the deepest parts of the sea. He talks of Paradise, just once. He says, "It was perfect. It was eternal. But not like this."</p><p>It wouldn't be, Sam thinks. But he has a hard time imagining any different.</p><p>.</p><p>"Knock knock," Sam says.</p><p>Lucifer says nothing.</p><p>"You're supposed to say, 'Who's there?'" Sam prompts.</p><p>"And why should I?" Lucifer asks.</p><p>"Look," Sam says. "Not everything is this great big struggle between good and evil, free will and destiny, rebellion and obedience. Sometimes it's just a harmless joke that requires a bit of cooperation. Now let's try this again. Knock knock."</p><p>Lucifer sighs loudly.</p><p>"Who's there?" he asks, every syllable dripping with exasperation.</p><p>"Armageddon," Sam says.</p><p>Lucifer pauses.</p><p>"Armageddon who?" he finally asks, with reluctant curiosity.</p><p>Sam grins.</p><p>"Armageddon a little bored," he says. "What's on TV?"</p><p>Lucifer snorts with contempt. Sam counts it as a win.</p><p>.</p><p>Then there is this: Lucifer becomes angry again. It is brief, and a shadow of his former ire, of the wrath that burned him out of Heaven, but it is there, like a flash in the dark.</p><p>"You cannot possibly understand what it was like," Lucifer says, "to be shown those creatures that looked so much like us - but worse. Naked and clumsy and fragile and base." He shakes his head with disgust. "And then to be told to love them above all else. To watch them be loved."</p><p>He clenches his hand into a fist, opens it again, and stares down at the palm. Sam wonders idly if angels have fingerprints, if there are whorls to trace, that set individuals apart. Maybe it doesn't matter. Everything that Lucifer touches is forever after touched by Lucifer.</p><p>"I was glorious," Lucifer says breathily, oblivious to this contemplation. "I shone brightest of them all, most brilliant, most perfect. And yet my Father was not satisfied by my Grace. So He made humans, blind and stupid and ugly. I looked at them and I wondered, how could this be what He wanted? I was perfect. Perfect!" Lucifer snarls, face contorting with rage. The tranquility vanishes out of him. "And my Father wanted - "</p><p>"Imperfection," Sam finishes.</p><p>Lucifer looks up at him, as if he had momentarily forgotten Sam was there. His expression clears to emptiness once again, revealing nothing of his thoughts in his direct and unflinching stare. </p><p>Sam looks away first.</p><p>"Do you think God gets bored?" he asks, staring out at the glittering false ocean. "If He has everything already planned out, if everything is perfectly designed - it would be a bit boring for the Creator, wouldn't it?"</p><p>"Are you saying," Lucifer begins in a dangerous tone, "that He was bored of me?"</p><p>"I'm saying," Sam says, and then stops.</p><p>He can feel the void of it, has been able to for some time now, stretching out and away across the infinite horizon, away into dizzying nothingness forever. He's glimpsed eternity, and it isn't the terrifying monster he expected to find. It's quiet and patient and terribly dull.</p><p>"Do you think maybe," he tries again, "God is in his own Hell? Trapped in a world where nothing ever changes? Just like this. The tide goes in and out. The sun goes up and down. But every day it's the same beach, the same water, and He can't escape. So He makes things to love so that He can be loved in return, and He makes things to punish so that He can be punished in return, and He doesn't really care which one wins out so long as He ends up surprised, because then there will be something new, for the very first time. And maybe that's why He decided that you and Michael would fight without deciding who would win. He loved you both, but not as much as He longed for an instant when He wasn't sure what would happen next."</p><p>There is a long silence. It goes on for what feels like days. Sam doesn't look to see if Lucifer is still there. Where else would he go?</p><p>The stars come up, then the moon, fat and round as it is every night in the Cage. The gentle sound of water lapping at the sand absorbs all else. There is no sleep here, but Sam feels himself being lulled toward it, as if slowly being sucked into an abyss.</p><p>Finally, Lucifer says, "If all existence is God's Hell, then why do you suppose He was put there?"</p><p>"Same reason as you I'd guess," Sam says. "Too much pride."</p><p>He glances at Lucifer. Satan's eyes glow.</p><p>"What a blasphemous thing you are," he says quietly. "How do you come by such terrible thoughts?" It's hard to tell if he's angry or awed or merely curious - his voice is so soft and flat.</p><p>It doesn't really matter. The worst has already been done to Sam, after all.</p><p>"It's because I'm imperfect," Sam tells him. "It means I get to doubt."</p><p>"And you doubt so much," Lucifer says. "I keep forgetting somehow: You were made for me."</p><p>Sam bristles.</p><p>"I was not," he snipes. "And anyway, how do you know it's not the other way around? Maybe it was you who was made for me. Did you ever think of that?"</p><p>"Oh," Lucifer says. "I wouldn't count on it. But who knows?" His lips twist. "As we've just been discussing, God works in mysterious ways. He chained us together. In this hypothesis of yours - was it punishment or mercy?"</p><p>Sam buries his face in his arms and doesn't say what he believes - that not even God really knows.</p><p>He rises from his seat and sinks to his knees not far from the water's edge. There he begins to sculpt sand into castles and towers and moats.</p><p>.</p><p>"You story about the orchard was stupid," Sam says after a time.</p><p>His sandcastle has extended into a city, into a kingdom, a metropolis that sprawls across the beach.</p><p>Lucifer smiles slightly - amused, curious, and doubtful. Indulgently, but without real expectation, he asks, "How so?"</p><p>"Because he could have killed them," Sam says, "and still had someone to eat the fruit. The angel could have eaten it."</p><p>"You really think so?" Lucifer asks. "Better the Devil than the human bandits?"</p><p>Sam pauses at that.</p><p>Finally, he says, "Maybe sometimes the Devil is a kindness."</p><p>Otherwise he'd be stuck here alone.</p><p>He pushes more wet sand together, digs little windows into turrets with his fingers. </p><p>A shadow falls over him. Always like this. When he looks up, Lucifer looks down. Always like this.</p><p>He eyes Sam's careful city of dirt with a derisive smile, and then pulls one dripping leg up and crushes the tallest tower under foot.</p><p>Sam laughs.</p><p>"What are you, five?" he asks. "If you wanted to play, you could've just said so."</p><p>"Do you want to know what I think, Sam?" Lucifer asks, ignoring him.</p><p>"No," says Sam, rocking back on his heels. "But tell me anyway."</p><p>"If you and I had traded places," Lucifer says, "and you had been made an archangel of God, and I into the human son of John Winchester, nothing would have changed. Here we would be, just like this. Exactly the same. How is that not destiny?"</p><p>"Because I don't want it to be," Sam says.</p><p>"More human arrogance," Lucifer says with scorn.</p><p>Sam juts his chin out in defiant agreement and begins molding sand once more.</p><p>"Are you going to destroy every sandcastle I build?" he asks.</p><p>"Until I get bored," Lucifer says.</p><p>Sam keeps building anyway.</p><p>"I'm going to hide a sharp stick in one," he promises. "It'll stab you when you least expect it."</p><p>"Then I'll get bored less quickly," Lucifer says, not sounding in the least bit put out.</p><p>.</p><p>Sandcastles rise. Sandcastles fall. Sam makes whole worlds that Lucifer destroys. But not just Lucifer. Sometimes the tide comes in before either of them can attack or defend, and they are helpless to do anything but watch it all be washed away.</p><p>Inevitably, they both get bored of this game.</p><p>"Will you remember me tomorrow?" Sam asks.</p><p>"How could I forget?" Lucifer asks.</p><p>"What about a week from now?"</p><p>"To the extent that there are weeks in here, yes."</p><p>"What about in a year?"</p><p>"Sam, I will never forget you, for all eternity, because that's how long we're stuck with each other. I was pretty sure you were clear on that point when you threw us in here together, but, if not, I am terribly sorry that I have to break the news: This is for forever."</p><p>A silence falls between them.</p><p>"Knock knock," Sam says after a while.</p><p>"Who's there?" Lucifer grudgingly responds.</p><p>"You liar," Sam teases. "You said you wouldn't forget me."</p><p>For a second, Lucifer looks affronted. Then he looks dangerously fond.</p><p>.</p><p>The Cage destroys all reluctance. It destroys many things.</p><p>Sam begins to feel less and less that he is separate from Lucifer. He can hardly imagine a universe where they're apart. It would be worse than missing a limb, because he's lost many of those and still stayed whole. It would be like losing the voice from inside his own head. Then he would be alone. He'd be torn asunder.</p><p>Lucifer must feel it, too.</p><p>He stands in the water facing the horizon, again and still. Sam sits on the shore. Again and still. Here they have long remained, like sentries, each one holding his side back.</p><p>"If I asked you now," Lucifer asks, "would you say 'yes'?"</p><p>And Sam almost capitulates. </p><p>What else is there to do? It's something, isn't it? All he wants anymore is something. 'Yes' would be something, even if it's something like salt water is to a man dying of thirst.</p><p>Then he feels some cavern in him gape open and he thinks - there will always be more of this, but there will always be more of me, too. </p><p>This Hell is a mirror.</p><p>"No," he says. "Not even now. Do you want to know why?"</p><p>"No," Lucifer says. "But tell me anyway."</p><p>"Because it would infuriate you," Sam says. "Don't you want to feel fury again?"</p><p>Lucifer glances over his shoulder at Sam. He does not answer. He does not have to. His face is filled with raw desire.</p><p>"Come stand with me in the water," the Devil says.</p><p>Sam wades out.</p><p>Joining him there, Sam realizes for the first time why Lucifer stands with the ocean at his waist. At the point where his hips meet the water, Sam is both hot and cold. The water rises. It retreats. Minutely, there is change. It eases something tight in him, like a balm.</p><p>It is neither pleasant nor painful. The ocean and the sun. Neither is better. Neither is worse. Together, they are almost enough.</p><p>"Are you ready to be gentle with me yet?" Sam asks quietly, after they have been standing for a while.</p><p>Lucifer hums with thought.</p><p>"Are you ready to be gentle with me?" he asks back.</p><p>Sam hesitates.</p><p>"But then what? When we get bored of that? What happens then?"</p><p>Lucifer reaches out and wraps his hand around the back of Sam's neck, drags him close so their foreheads are pressed together, their eyes locked, not this time in conflict, but in a softer kind of embrace.</p><p>It's the first time Sam has touched someone else since the two of them were fighting all those millennia ago. The contact shudders through him and sinks warmly into his bones.</p><p>"Then," Lucifer murmurs into the sliver of air between them, "I will rip your heart out of your chest again, and eat it."</p><p>"Okay," Sam says. He closes his eyes and leans in. "But this time, I get to eat yours, too."</p><p>The Devil sighs happily, and relents.</p><p>It must be easier for him this time around, Sam thinks, now that there's someone else here. Now that there's someone else with him, to eat this poisonous fruit.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>written with the intention of ignoring absolutely everything after season five (most of which i haven't seen) but also i really like the implication of bored hallucifer irritating sam in a universe where this was the cage</p><p>*writes slash fanfic as a way to trick people into reading my in-universe explorations of theology* neener neener</p></blockquote></div></div>
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